Queen of Ashes
by Dodongo Dislike
Summary: The easing of regrets
**Title:** Queen of Ashes **
Author:** Dodongo Dislike  
 **Based on:** Mishmosh of OOT, TP, others in my hunt for characters to fill roles.  
 **Summary:** The easing of regrets.  
 **Author's Note:** I was moved to update Moment of Steel, but this happened instead. Consider it a parallel universe.

* * *

 **Chapter One**

The man was staring at him.

Merion of Ordona, Merion the Meek, the Twisted Prince, the Prince Who Fled, second son of the second to last king, et cetera and so forth had been trying to keep a low profile in the tavern- _an easy task for a hunchback,_ the obnoxiously detached part of his personality noted-and was evidently failing. Because the man was watching him. Sitting there, in the dark corner, with the candle light gleaming in his one eye, the man had not stopped watching him since he and Twyla had walked in.

Merio glanced over at his youthful companion, curious to see if she had noticed the stranger's scrunity. But no, she was too busy enjoying the simple sludge and ale they had been served and absently tapping her fingers on the table in time with the musicians on the far side of the room. As if sensing his glance, Twyla looked up from her plate and smiled at him with laughter in her orange eyes. "Why aren't you eating, Merio? You're the one who said there's not much on the road for the next couple of days."

Not wanting to unduly alarm her, Merio simply shrugged. "You heard the wench. Small man, small appetite."

Twyla, as unimpressed as ever with his jokes about his affliction, rolled her eyes and returned her attention to her food.

So she hadn't noticed. Maybe it was nothing. They were, after all, a striking pair-a hunchback and a girl with eyes and hair the color of torchlight. Either of them alone was enough to incite curiosity in others.

Knowing better but unable to stop himself, Merio glanced back at the stranger again. Still shrouded in the shadows, still watching. The hair on the back of Merio's neck began to stand on end, and his heartbeat began to quicken.

There was the bounty on his head, true, but with no one left alive to pay it, why would any self-respecting brigand bother hunting him down? Knowing of the bounty meant knowing of the Ordonan Royal Family's recent troubles, and knowing of their recent troubles meant knowing that there was no Ordonan Royal Family left. Ordona was now a self-governing concern, too focused on working out the kinks in its experiment in democracy to care about its former prince, the hunchback who had never been intended to nor intended himself to rule. The Ordonan people did not want his head, his brother was too dead to pay for his head, so the only other people who could conceivably be interested in him would be-

"Excuse me," Merio waved to the serving wench striding past their table. "Could you, without looking at him, tell me if you know anything about the man in the corner by the window?"

"Sure, honey," she said, and turned to stare at the man, much to Merio's exasperation. "No, don't know anything about him. Just another one of those Hylians wandering around. You two want anything else?"

Twyla, roused from her ale started to say, "Those cakes-" but Merio cut her off.

"No, we're done." Fishing some rupees out of his purse, he stood and handed them to the wench. "That should cover us."

The wench arched a brow as as she counted the amount. "And then some." She hurried off, no doubt to secure the money before Merio could change his mind.

Saving money was, of course, the last thing on Merio's mind at that moment. _Hylian_. "We need to leave now," he told Twyla, who was already furrowing her brow at him for interrupting her cake request.

"Merio, it's dark out. We can't travel the roads at night."

He pulled his cloak on. "Yes, we can. We are able to. And we will now."

Twlya rolled her eyes again. "Don't be pedantic. I meant it's dangerous out there. We shouldn't."

"We should." Pulling her cloak off the back of her chair, he held it up to her. "It's dangerous here, too."

She stayed rooted to her chair. "What, because you're all upset by that guy who's been watching us? C'mon, Merio, aren't you used to people staring at you by now? Oh, and don't give me that look. I may not be as clever as you, but I'm not stupid."

In another situation, Merio would have had a good comeback for her. Witty retorts were, after all, the one thing he was known for. Or had been, at any rate. But right now, his nerves were too on fire for him to bother. "Fine. I'm going. Stay if you wish."

"Merio-" Twyla started, but he had already stalked off.

It took longer than he expected for her to catch up with him, as he was already outside and on the moonlit road before he heard her quick footsteps come up behind him.

"Sorry," she said as she fell in step beside him, her breath steaming in the cold night air. "Wanted to wrap up a slice of that cake."

He grunted and quickened his pace.

Twyla hurried to keep up with him, wheezing a little as she asked, "And what's the rush anyway? So some Hylian was staring at you, so what? And what exactly is running away going to get us?"

"Distance."

"Oh right." She was a pretty girl, but she was not above unpretty mannerisms such as snorting in disgust. "Like a grown man would have trouble catching up with us."

"Twyla, please. Leave me my delusions."

"Okay, Merio. Will do." She adopted a sing-song voice. "We'll get away just fine. No handsome, mysterious strangers will intercept us along the way and beat you up for reasons you will not tell me."

"Thank you, Twyla." Despite his dread and the urgency with which he wanted to put as much space between him and a Hylian as possible, a small part of Merio could not help but be bolstered by her teasing.

Maybe the past would not catch up with him tonight.

"Oh, and we definitely won't get killed by any bandits or moblins or wolfos or whatever."

Maybe he would get lucky and die before it could.

* * *

 _He picked his way through the dank corridors, careful not to stumble with only the lantern to light his way, praying with every step to the Light Spirit that he would not be caught. True, his brother had ordered to him to bring a message, but he had other things he wished to say away from the prying ears of a guard escort._

 _At last he arrived at the cell in question, no different from any of the others, save its lone occupant. Peering into the darkness, he could barely see a silhouette rise from the corner and slowly approach the cell door._

 _She was of average height, which meant she towered over him. She was clad in what looked for all the world like a nightdress, which he found absurd until he remembered she had been taken from her birthing bed. Even so, she stood as tall as if she were greeting a supplicant at court, not a hunchback in a dungeon. Her eyes swept across him, assessing him, and he suppressed a shudder. He knew the stories. The Hylian witch, bearer of an ancient and divine power, the woman who had defeated darker powers than could be imagined. Even if only half of it were true, keeping her here was probably suicidal._

 _They regarded each other in silence. Finally, Merio said, "My lady."_

 _Her eyes, the same color blue as a cloudless winter sky, gleamed in the lantern light. "I am Zelda, Queen of Hyrule, Prince Merion."_

 _"Your Grace. I apologize. My Hylian is...not the best."_

 _"Then shall we use a more common tongue?" she asked in a lightly accented version of the same._

 _"That is considerate of you, Your Grace."_

 _"Yes," she said, her bright voice stained with acid. "How very considerate of me. And are you here to offer me a considerate welcome?"_

 _Merio swallowed. His brother had asked this of him, and no matter how mad the king might have gone under Yuga's influence, he was still Merio's brother. "Yes. My brother the king wishes you to know that he is not an unreasonable man."  
_

 _His words were met by a long silence in which her eyes seemed to catch fire, though that could only have been a trick of the lantern light and his overactive imagination. "Isn't he?"  
_

 _With no good answer to offer her, Merio spread his hands and hung his head. He wondered if she had seen her husband cut down. He wondered if the soldiers had taken the baby from his nursery or they had ripped him out of her arms._

 _A rustle of movement interrupted his reverie. When he looked up, he saw that she had braced herself against the wall of her cell with one hand._ _"On what premise am I held?"_

 _"On grounds of sorcery." Merio thought of Yuga and grimaced. "For using the dark arts to interfere with affairs in Ordona."_

 _"How interesting._ _And why am I actually held?"_

 _"Ordona is dying. We have not had a decent harvest in five years, and my brother needs to find food for the masses, lest the masses feast off of him."_

 _"So he desires Hyrule's fields to feed them, and instead of turning to trade turns to conquest. Because the Hylian Witch Queen cursed your land." Her gaze narrowed, the reflection of the lantern burning in her eyes. "Who is the sorcerer who stands by your brother?"_

 _An excellent question, one which Merio had been asking himself for a few years now. "His name is Yuga. He joined my father's council the year he died and since then has been chief advisor to the crown. Who he truly is?" Merio shrugged. "He says he came from the east. I have been unable to determine anything else, given our resources." He hesitated for a moment, then decided he might as well admit it. "I was considering writing to you about it, given your reputation."_

 _At that, her lips curved into the smallest semblance of a smile, though she did not comment on the obvious irony. Instead, she asked,_ _"Why are you here, Prince Merion? Because your brother sent you to tell me he is not an unreasonable man?"_

 _"Because there's something else you must know." Fighting the urge to glance behind himself for spies in the darkness-as if he would be able to see them-he stepped closer to the cell bars, close enough to smell the tang of the iron. "Your son is alive."_

 _He was not sure what reaction he had been expecting, perhaps some outburst of emotion. Instead, she went perfectly still. In the silence that followed, Merio had the opportunity to study the tight lines of her face, the cavernous shadows beneath her eyes. When she finally spoke again, it was a single word._ _"Why?"_

 _Another question Merio had been asking himself. With a shrug, he offered the only answer he had been able to come up with. "Leverage, I assume. For whatever it is my brother and Yuga actually want from you."_

 _She still had not moved since his revelation about the baby. "I know what he wants."_

 _Merio pressed his hands against the cell bars, the tang of the iron sinking into his nose. "What?" When she remained silent, he pushed, "_ _The kingdom is restive, Your Grace. The people do not want this. I fear for my family's survival if my brother continues with this sham. If you tell me what he wants, maybe we can find a way to give it to him and end this."_

 _"What he wants-" she started, then closed her eyes. "What he wants is beyond my power to give."_

 _"Then is there anything I can get you?" Other than an escape, the baby prince, and a safe passage back to Hyrule._

 _She opened her eyes to regard him for a long, unsettling amount of time. He found himself trapped in her gaze, aware now that the stories about her-about her power, beauty, and strangeness-had all been true. Finally, she made her request._

 _"Pen and paper, Prince Merion. That is all you can do for me for now."_

* * *

Of course they were set upon by bulblins.

Not an hour out of the village and into the forest, as they found themselves where the tree canopy was so thick as to block out all but the thinnest strands of moonlight, Merio caught a whiff of a particularly noxious odor, which was following by an ominous tramping noise. Twyla and Merio picked up their pace in tandem, first walking more quickly, then jogging, then running straight around a bend in the road and into the raiding party.

"Flaming sols," Twyla swore.

Merio couldn't reply; he was too out of breath.

The bulblins did not look surprised to have their quarry almost literally run into them. No doubt they had been tracking the two for longer than Twyla and Merio had been aware of them. They merely grinned their bestial smiles, fangs gleaming the barest hint of moonlight. There was a brief pause in which both parties stared at each other. Wrapping his hand around the hilt of his short sword, Merio had a fleeting moment of insanity in which he found himself thinking that maybe he could actually fight them off.

Then the lead bulblin raised his club and started forward...only to topple to the ground with an arrow embedded in its forehead.

Confused, Merio glanced up at Twyla, even though he knew full well she was not carrying around a bow and arrow. Her face, so pale in the moonlight as if to appear almost blue, displayed as much surprise as he suspected he did. "What-" she started to say when another arrow felled a second bulblin.

The remaining bulblins hesitated, giving Merio a chance to look over his shoulder for the source of the arrows. He was torn between relief and a new variety of fear when he saw it was the Hylian from the tavern, who had no doubt been following them the entire way. The moonlight, thin as it was, provided Merio with his first good view of the man, its silver strands gilding his light hair and rough beard and illuminating his remaining eye with a dark sapphire glow. His face was all hard lines and angles, accentuated by the ragged scar that ran from his forehead to opposite cheekbone, disappearing briefly under the eye patch where his right eye had been.

"Oh my," Twyla murmured, evidently over the mortal fear of mere moments earlier.

If the Hylian heard her, he saw no need to respond. Indeed, the only sign that he was even aware of their existence was a brusque, "Get down," as he strode past them, returning his bow to its sling on his back.

Out of the corner of his eye, Merio saw Twyla obligingly dive for the ground as one of the two remaining bulblins turned tail and ran off into the forest and the other charged towards them. The man's face betrayed no expression as he drew his sword, and in a swift, brutal parry-swing-slice sequence, relieved the creature of its head. Without so much as sparing a glance for any of the still-twitching corpses at his feet, he bent down, grabbed the edge of one of the bulblin's cloaks, and began wiping the blood off of his blade.

"Are you all right?" he asked, not removing his attention from his sword.

The Hylian's nonchalant attitude along with the obviously high quality of the weapon in his hand did nothing to soothe Merio's nerves. In fact, his sense of dread was growing steadily stronger.

Twyla, however, evidently did not feel the same way. "Yes, thanks to you, stranger! We're lucky you weren't far behind us."

"I saw you leave the tavern." The man straightened up and turned to regard them with that same, unsettling steady gaze. "Traveling at night is a bad idea."

Merio didn't need to see Twyla's expression, as her elbow in his ribs was enough of an _"I told you so."_ "Where are you headed" she asked, and before the man could answer, she blurted out, "We're on our way to Lynna City."

Merio suppressed a groan at her carelessness. Now the Hylian would say-

"So am I."

Twlya smiled, evidently delighted at the thought of having a handsome man-or excellent fighter-or both-travel with them. "Why don't you join us, then? It's dangerous to go alone."

"Yes," the stranger said, with a smile like a wolf baring its fangs. "So they say."

"Wonderful! It'll be a relief to have someone with your prowess to keep us safe."

 _Prowess?_ Merio marveled, surprised to find himself rolling his eyes in spite of his unease. The girl could be utterly ridiculous at times.

Ignorant of Merio's scorn, Twyla was asking, "What's your name, stranger?"

Again, that unsettling smile made Merio wonder if they were going to be accompanied or stalked.

"Call me Shade."


End file.
